Here we go again. I can’t believe it’s week 6 already. This is all happening so fast. These past few days have been really hectic, not because of DS106 but also because final exams for my classes in Tanzania are coming up and I am very nervous. Exams are in kiswahili, a language I did not know a word of 6 weeks ago, but now I am expected to take full exams in it (well isn’t that awkward). Anyway, this week has to be the lowest for me. I am extremely upset and disappointment at myself. I was not able to participate in the radio show because I had no internet access. I have also been studying for my exams and teaching english at the primary school downtown dar es salaam.
Putting excuses aside. This week I recorded my letter home. I added sound effects to show the environment I am in. For my last week in Tanzania, we went on a three day safari through serengeti national park. We observed the wild life and connected with nature. It was amazing.
Dj’s tend to remix different songs to make a fun and entertaining soundtrack to listen to. It may seem easy to merge together multiple songs, but after working on this assignment, I found it very challenging.
The goal was to take clips from different songs and merge them together to make one single song. I used Garage Band for this assignment. The songs included (in order):
One More Time -Daft Punk
La Vie – The Deans List ( The Deans List produces their own music but incorporates usually one or two other songs into their work)
Dancing in the Dark – Dev
Love on Top – Beyonce
Garage Band offers free sound clips to use in songs, or looping songs together. I used “Club Beats” and “Jingles” as transitional sounds. I wanted to do a remix based on a music genre of pop/dance/club something fun to listen to. In my opinion it takes a certain skill to mash music together and actually make it sound nice.
I imported each song and layered them on top of each other by a second or two. Once the segment of the song I wanted was over, I clipped it (or cropped) out.
I started by reviewing the TDC archives for July 11-17, 2012. Two of these were video so I decided to start with those and fit the others in like puzzle pieces! Starting with Martha’s mysterious The Most Amazing Technology video (tdc189), I downloaded it and imported it into VideoPad. I think this is when I decided to go with an ominous, mystery compilation, building on the mood of her video. Moving along, I assessed the other tdcs and proceeded to fit them together. I turned TDC 185 – tornado by Malyn Mawby into a video by applying the film effect to make it move and shimmy like a real tornado. Importing it back into VideoPad, I positioned it at the beginning of the track and overlayed Tdc190 boilingwater by Malyn Mawby as a soundtrack over the tornado for additional effect.
For the next segment, I used No TV. Just static (tdc187) by Audrey Watters. Overlayed on this segment of track is the Morse code sound bits from the NCH Sound Effects Library, included in VideoPad, and a short piece of TDC188 Telemarketing Call by mrswanson. I trimmed this soundclip down to fit the video piece and keep the overall project to a shorter time. I added two more Morse code sound bits on the end to transition into Martha’s technology video segment.
To wind down the entire project and include a few more tdc projects, I inserted a blank slide after her video to showcase My strongest attraction #tdc191 by Martha and emphasize her statement of being the most amazing thing she’s ever experienced. After that clip, I merged two photos, by inserting Jacques Cartier, Over the St. Lawrence by aforgrave (tdc184) into the video track and overlaying it with a cropped version of Rainbows by robertss (tdc186). To wrap it all up, I inserted scrolling credits to the contributor’s projects that helped create this compilation.
In the end, I used 8 tdcs instead of the required 7. This was a fun project to do, even though, yet again the final product is not exactly as fluid as I envisioned it to be.
I hope I’ve done cogdog and ds106 proud with this new Mashup Assignment!
Recap of all the bits and pieces that made this assignment special:
Let’s just say I had no idea what the heck I was doing with this assignment. Not because it was difficult, but because my mind was all over the place with this one. While I was in Tanzania, I fell in love with swahili music. For this assignment, I decided to use one of my favorite songs in kiswahili called “Joanita.” I played around with the pitch and added swirling echoes. Again, garageband goes a long way.
For this assignment I had to create a scene or film from a horror film. This assignment took a TON of time. By the time I got to editing, I had over 25 clips. I had a mood in mind that I wanted to create, and shooting for a scary movie… is well difficult. Lighting, sound, speed, and angle are really really crucial- moreso than in other genre’s I believe.
I think this was a great personal success though. I can feel the emotion, and hope you can too!
TUTORIAL:
1. First I shot scenes , usually only a few seconds in length. If you don’t have a light on your camera, use a small lamp to light a room (make sure it’s BEHIND the camera though). You can also light a room down the hall or next door (I did this in the hallway scene at the beginning of the video). Experiment with panting, screaming, and shaking the camera to create moods as desired. I used candles as well in a lot of my scenes.
2. The opening scene, I held the camera myself and lit a candle. I recorded myself panting and shaky, and just walked to the closet slowly.
3. The hallway scene was shot in a dark hall, I had a room down the hall (behind me) lit. And then used the bathroom lights to create a flickering effect by turning them on and off.
4. I simply had someone stand next to the candle out of line of sight, and blow the candle out to imply an erie presence once the closet was open.
5. The scene where the closet monster/ghost walks by, I used my younger sister in a black hoodie. She just walked past the camera creeply.
Now that you’ve shot a few clips, upload them onto your computer. You are now ready to edit them into a scene…
1. I opened Window’s Live Movie maker
2. Went to the upload videos and photos button and uploaded the scenes I wanted. You can move them around to order them as you please. Use the split button under the edit tab across the top to cut scenes up into pieces.
3. After ordering and splitting scenes as desired.. you can use the animations tab to have scenes fade in, or animate in in a certain way. That is how I got some of my scene changes to blot out.
4. Using title and credits buttons under the home tab you can ad whatever titles and credits you please, and customize them in terms of font, color, size, and even how the enter and exit the screen.
5. Finally use the add music button to add sound from a file to the video, at whatever desired location in the video. You can fade the sound in and out (I faded mine out at the end) by going to the music tools options tab. I searched and downloaded my sound clip from freesound.org , and you can edit them using audacity if you choose. I did not edit the sound clip at all for this assignment, I liked it and just simply put it into my video.
This is a screenshot of the home tab… I have the things I wrote in bold circled, it’s very easy to navigate.
Also… don’t forget to have fun, experiment with it, and share!!!
This week we are doing a lot of remixes. When I got my Remix assignment, I was a little afraid. I didn’t know how exactly to remix a “5 seconds of fame” video. After thinking and thinking a thinking, I finally came up with a remix assignment. This assignment is called “IDENTIFY THIS SOUND” The steps to creating this video are as followed.
1. Take a short video clip (preferably 5 seconds)
2. Take the audio from the video.
3. Play ONLY the audio portion of the video.
5. Ask the viewer, “Can you Identify this sound”
6. Give the viewer at least 3 answer choices of what the sound could be
7. Give the viewer some time to think and then reveal the answer
8. Show the video clip, and see if you viewer guessed it right.
My video people, is a Remix of Jasmine’s 5 Sec of fame
Creating this assignment took a lot of time, but it wasn’t too hard. The steps to creating this were
So I used the remix generator and it gave me a remix of the 9 Lives assignment and the twist was to use an aspect of a Dr.Seuss character. I chose to use the Grinch as my character and I found different pictures of the character online and labeled them like they were pictures from different Christmases. I think this is a fun twist to the assignment and I thought it was fun.
For this I chose to combine two of my favorite scenes from both movies, I used the sound of the last scene from the movie “300″ and the visual from Lord of The Rings Return of the King. Both of these scenes are similar because they are Pre battle inspirational speeches so that why I think it works. I used real player to get the two separate clips into VideoPad then I muted the audio for the LOTR clip and added the 300 clip to the audio only level. I then clipped it to mesh better with the visual clip. I think this is a fun assignment it really lets you choose what ever you want I had a couple different ideas but most of them had already been used so it seems that I have a similar mind to past ds106ers.
For my music mapped video I chose to do the George Strait “All My Ex’s Live in Texas” I chose this songs because I really like George Straits music and this song. For me I found it difficult to get the google maps into Video pad, the way I was able to do it was I saved the maps into a pdf then copy and pasted them into paint and then cropped them to what I wanted. This took a while to figure out but eventually worked out. getting the song was much easier because I already had it in my iTunes so I was able to just drag it over into VideoPad and use it. I thought this was fun mapping out the places he mentions where his Ex’s are its almost a map of places for him to avoid when in Texas.
Rihanna is my favorite artist(if you all haven’t noticed by now) and I know every single one of her songs. When I saw the album cover assignment, I knew exactly what to do. Rihanna has a song called “S&M” which in reference to sexual acts. It stands for Sadism and Masochism-The practice of using pain as a sexual stimulant. That is NOT the reason why I chose this cover. But on the “S&M” cover, she appears to be eating something, so I changed the “S&M” to Spaghetti and Meatballs.
This was very easy to do. Here are the steps
1. Went to Google
2. Typed in “S&M” album cover
3. Downloaded it to my cell phone
4. Opened up “PicsArt” (or whatever photo editor you have)
5. Imported the picture to PicsArt”
6. Selected “ADD TEXT”
7. Typed in what I wanted, dragged and dropped it on the picture.
It only took me about 15/20 minutes, but that was without WIFI, so it should be easier.. I hope you like my new creation.. and if you want to here the “S&M” song.. ->Click Here. –>S&M -Rihanna<<–
Camp is now over (see the final story. If you are craving an experience like this, head over to ds106 and see how to participate. For more on the Summer of Magic Macguffin, see.....
